Today, the solutions to deliver television programs through the DSL line are based on the injection of video signals at the PABX level, i.e. the telephone exchange receiving the so called “last mile” line to the end user. The router, also called IGMP termination point, has the task to receive all broadcasted services and inject one of them to the line of a single user, according to the end user selection. A service can be a television channel, game channel, information data channel such as stock exchange data, available for a plurality of users or dedicated to only one user (Video On Demand).
The router is connected through a very high speed communication link with the broadcasting center which is in charge with preparing all services. There are different types of services, some being accessible to all users, and other being dedicated to a limited number of users (subscription, pay-per-view). The router has the task to filter among the various services, the service requested by a user, and to extract this service to inject it on the user's line.
The multimedia unit of the user is able to send a selection command to the router in order to set up the filter of said router to the requested service.
In the IP world, the router (also known as IGMP termination point) is in charge of receiving a bundle of elementary streams together constituting a channel (or service) according to the MPEG-2 systems standard. Each elementary stream is identified by a specific Packet Identifier (PID) carried into the MPEG-2 packets headers. Examples of such a stream include:                video streams (usually one single video stream is transmitted because this is the most costly stream in terms of bandwidth, but in advanced applications multiple views, e.g. from different cameras on a sports event, or multiple resolutions, e.g. matching heterogeneous end user devices capabilities, may be associated with different elementary streams for the user to select)        audio streams (audio1, audio2, audio3 . . . ) corresponding for instance to different languages for the user to select or different coding method (stereo, 5:1),        conditional access streams (ecm1, ecm2) corresponding to different conditional access systems operating jointly in a “simulcrypting” broadcast environment according to the DVB standards,        Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data which contains the description in user-friendly form of the services available from the router. Usually, each provider shape its own EPG for marketing purpose (advertisement) and to allow the user to select the channels among the channels available through this provider.        
The available speed between the router and the multimedia unit enables to unicast the necessary streams to form one channel over the IP line.